Businesses are deriving tremendous financial benefits from using the internet to strengthen relationships and improve connectivity with customers, suppliers, partners, and employees. Progressive organizations are integrating critical information systems including customer service, financial, distribution, and procurement from their private networks with the Internet. The business benefits are significant, but not without risk. Unfortunately, the risks are growing.
In response to the growing business risks of attacks, potentials for legal suits, federal compliance requirements, and so forth, companies have spent millions to protect the digital assets supporting their critical information systems. Most companies have invested, for example, in firewalls, anti-virus, and intrusion detection/prevention systems. However, many of the known exploits to businesses occur with businesses that had deployed some or all of these security technologies.
The reactive nature of many of these security technologies, and the well documented knowledge that network exploits essentially leverage known vulnerabilities, point to an immediate need for a more proactive solution. Many of these businesses include enterprise networks that have become increasingly segmented, often by security technologies, such as firewalls. Many of the businesses may have employed, for example, multiple tiers of firewalls, often using a multi-vendor approach. Such approaches also may have split the business's internal networks, implementing multiple levels of trust. These solutions therefore, have often created security nightmares that may ultimately cost the business and put them at further risk. Therefore, it is with respect to these considerations, and others, that the present invention has been made.